BRATTLEBORO — Emotions have run high in our town lately regarding the issue of unionization at the Brattleboro Food Coop. There has been a lot of talk - in the Co-op boardroom, in the press, on social media sites, on the street - about the efforts of the staff to unionize.
I would like to try to demystify some of the language that has been encountered lately.
Some people have asked, “Won't a union create a divide between workers and management?”
We believe that such a divide has existed at the Co-op for many years. The divide is the result of the hierarchical structure that management has adopted.
As a result of speaking with almost every employee who would be eligible to join the union, we have discovered that most people who work in the store feel that there is such a divide. Many of our co-workers have felt that their grievances have been ignored or that, in a dispute, managers' positions were favored over theirs.
Those employees who feel that the management team is approachable are a small minority. Perhaps the employees who recently approached management (which has previously opposed unionization) with complaints about activities of union organizers came away feeling very well heard by management.
Our objective is for all employees to be heard equally by management, and for all employees to have equal rights. Our entire motivation for unionizing has been that we have not felt heard by management, and that we have exhausted every available option for communication, to no avail.
We feel that, rather than creating a “big gap between one side and the other,” forming a union will actually help to heal the divide that already exists. The union will create a clear structure within which all parties can work from a basis of equality.
Many shareholders have commented on how glitzy, shiny, and corporate the new store feels. Many feel that the community spirit they enjoyed for so long is missing from the new Co-op. Our efforts to create this union, the unity it has already brought to the staff, and the support it has brought out in the community are also ways of addressing this change.
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Some employees feel that the decision to unionize should be a staff issue, that it is between staff and management only, that it was improper of us to approach the board or to involve shareholders in our appeal to the board.
That attitude is certainly a contrast to the situations that have arisen and been resolved in food co-ops in Montpelier, Northampton, and Greenfield. In those co-ops, the workers formed unions, approached their respective boards, and those boards voluntarily recognized the unions.
We could look at this “staff issue” point two different ways.
One is to say that, yes, this is between staff and management, in that staff has felt disenfranchised from management for a long time. And staff has made a decision regarding how to resolve that situation - that decision being to unionize. (As for the idea that staff members made that decision without hearing the other side of the story: we feel that we have been living the other side of the story.)
As for unionizing not concerning the board or shareholders, let's remember that the Co-op is owned by shareholders, and that those shareholders elect the board of directors to oversee the operations of the Co-op.
Even if the board has adopted a model that leaves personnel issues up to the general manager, it could still have chosen to respond to the group of employees who presented a list of concerns regarding management and an assurance that a majority of staff supported them.
Members of the board could have chosen to act when approached by a group of shareholders representing more than 500 shareholders who signed a petition in support of the workers' unionizing, especially with the model before them of three other nearby co-ops whose boards voluntarily recognized their unions.
People ask, “Why would the workers in a cooperative need to unionize? Doesn't a union go against cooperative values?”
In this paper [“'Not all the information is coming out; it is one-sided': Not all employees embrace the union,” Oct. 3], reporter Elizabeth Julia Stoumen wrote, “One of the principles [of cooperative structures] is democratic control by its membership, which collectively owns the entity. While employees aren't necessarily members, the culture of cooperatives creates a democratic and collaborative work environment.”
Ms. Stoumen might more accurately have written “could create a democratic and collaborative work environment.” The fact is, the only thing that distinguishes a co-op from any other business is that it is owned and controlled by member-owners, rather than by a publicly traded corporation.
And any company, whether a small food co-op or a huge corporation with thousands of employees in hundreds of branches, can decide to adopt open, inclusive, collaborative managerial strategies, or can rely on traditional, hierarchical, top-down, authoritarian structures. The Brattleboro Food Coop has consistently chosen the latter.
So the word “cooperative” can be distracting if we do not examine a so-called cooperative business based on its actions and organizational structure.
These are some of the statements that we have felt called to respond to. There are other statements that have been made lately which also raise questions and warrant attention, and we will address them in future letters and articles.